Aramco
Canvas Category OEM : Petroleum and Coal
We are one of the world’s largest integrated energy and chemicals companies, creating value across the hydrocarbon chain, and delivering societal and economic benefits to people and communities around the globe who rely on the vital energy we supply.We are committed to playing a leading role in the energy transition. We have a responsibility to help the world achieve a net-zero economy, and our people are working hard to help solve the world’s sustainability challenges.For our customers, we are a supplier of choice. For our shareholders, we provide long-term value creation. For communities around the world, our ambition is to provide reliable, affordable, and more sustainable energy.
Assembly Line
Andium Raises $21.7 Million in Series B Funding Led by Aramco Ventures to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Andium, an expert in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) remote-field monitoring and communications technologies, announced its $21.7 million Series B funding close led by Aramco Ventures, the corporate venture arm of one of the world’s largest integrated energy and chemicals companies. Joining the round are existing investors Climate Investment, Intrepid Financial Partners, and prominent individual investors including former Citadel CIO, Thomas Miglis. Following the company’s $15M Series A in 2021, this investment brings the company’s total funding to over $40 million.
The new capital will accelerate Andium’s global expansion, including scaling operations across oil and gas basins in the U.S. and the Middle East. It will also reduce technology and equipment costs, support ongoing research and development, and enhance the range of services Andium offers in industrial automation and emissions monitoring.
Promethean Particles Announces Closure of £8M Series A Investment Round
Promethean Particles announces the closing of a £8 million financing round. The investment was led by Mercia Ventures and Aramco Ventures, with participation from existing investors including the Midlands Engine Investment Fund I (managed by Foresight), the University of Nottingham, TSP Ventures, and the East Midlands Early Growth Fund (managed by the British Business Bank).
MOFs are a class of materials composed of metal ions interconnected by organic molecules to form a porous, lattice-like structure. Their unique architecture gives them an exceptionally high surface area and customizable pore sizes, which allows them to trap and store gases and liquids efficiently. This makes MOFs highly effective for applications such as gas storage and separation, carbon capture, and catalysis.
The company has developed a proprietary continuous-flow reactor that not only dramatically improves the throughput and cost of MOF production, but also increases process reliability and consistency, without sacrificing critical quality parameters. Promethean currently produces a wide portfolio of MOFs for various customer applications including carbon capture and storage (CCS), biogas upgrading, water harvesting and gas separation and storage.
Seeq Announces $50 million Series D Funding Round Led by Sixth Street Growth
Seeq, a leader in industrial analytics, AI, and monitoring, announced it has closed a $50 million Series D funding round led by leading global investment firm Sixth Street Growth, with participation from existing investors including Insight Partners, Altira Group, Second Avenue Partners, and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures. This round brings Seeq’s total funding to approximately $165 million. Nari Ansari, Managing Director at Sixth Street Growth, will join Seeq’s Board of Directors.
CorrosionRADAR raises €5.9M to help industries with corrosion management
Cambridge, UK-based CorrosionRADAR, a provider of predictive Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) monitoring solutions, announced that it has secured £5M (approximately €5.9M) investment in a fresh funding round from Aramco Ventures, Dow, Kanoo Ventures, and Mercia Ventures.
CorrosionRADAR will use the investments to accelerate its growth plans and large-scale deployment of its CUI monitoring systems worldwide. The company will use the capital to continue developing new product lines to improve safety and operations within the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, and the expanding hydrogen sector.
China's Baosteel to boost investment in steel plate in Saudi to $1 billion
China’s biggest listed steelmaker, Baoshan Iron and Steel Co, said on Thursday that it will more than double its investment in a steel plate joint venture in Saudi Arabia to $1 billion from around $437.5 million previously.
Baosteel, a subsidiary of the world’s largest steelmaker China Baowu Steel Group, signed agreements in May with Saudi Aramco and the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) to build a steel plate manufacturing joint venture.
Baosteel holds 50% in the joint venture, while Saudi Aramco and PIF will take 25% stake each.
Saudi Aramco unveils industry’s first generative AI model
Aramco’s AI model is a pioneering technology in the industrial sector. It has 250 billion parameters that are adjustable during training to generate outputs or make predictions. The AI was trained using seven trillion data points, collecting more than 90 years of company history.
Amin H Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, said the AI model would analyse drilling plans, geological data, historic drilling time and costs as well as recommend the most ideal well options. He added that for the company’s downstream business, “metabrain will have the capability to provide precise forecasts for refined products, including pricing trends, market dynamics and geopolitical insights”.
Aramco plans to develop a version with 1 trillion parameters by the end of this year.
BRKZ Secures $8m in Series A Funding to Revolutionize the Building Materials Sector in MENA
Helping to connect construction businesses with suppliers of building materials, a pioneering B2B construction tech startup BRKZ that specializes in materials procurement for construction projects is announcing a $8 million investment to empower contractors to reach their full potential.
The funding round was co-led by 9900 and BECO Capital, with participation from Aramco’s Wa’ed Ventures, Knollwood Investment Advisory, RZM Investment and MISY Ventures. With this series A funding round, BRKZ has now raised $13.55m in total. BRKZ’s seed round ($5.55m) was led by Better Tomorrow Ventures, with participation from Class 5 Global, Knollwood Investment Advisory, Plus VC, and several other strategic Saudi angel investors.
Nokia Bell Labs and Aramco announce R&D collaboration to support priority industries
Nokia’s research arm, Nokia Bell Labs and Aramco, the world’s largest energy company, have signed a non-binding R&D collaboration agreement to support Industry 4.0/4IR digital use-case creation and proof of concept development for priority industrial sectors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and beyond.
Building on the vision of the recently launched Aramco Digital Company, this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is envisioned to accelerate digital transformation within the Kingdom, the Middle East, and North Africa (MENA) region and globally. The collaboration seeks to leverage cutting-edge research and technologies from both companies to advance digital use-cases for a diverse range of industries, including oil and gas, utilities, mining, manufacturing and logistics.
Mighty Buildings raises $52 million in funding
Mighty Buildings, a leader in 3D printing construction technology known for its prefabricated, environmentally-friendly, and climate-resilient homes, has raised $52 million in funding – demonstrating strong investor confidence in Mighty Buildings’ innovative offsite 3D printing construction technology. The round was co-led by Wa’ed Ventures, the $500 million innovation-focused venture capital fund backed by Saudi Aramco, and by BOLD Capital Partners, a US disruption and transformation-focused venture firm.
The funding is earmarked to accelerate development and scale production of new homes for the US market, where new home demand continues to increase, as well as to establish manufacturing operations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of the largest and fastest growing construction markets in the world. The addition of operations in the Gulf region aligns with Mighty Buildings’ strategy to transform housing construction while addressing sustainability, climate resilience, and the global housing shortage.
Boston Metal Closes $262M Series C Funding Round to Decarbonize Steelmaking and Disrupt the Metals Industry
Boston Metal, a global metals technology solutions company, today announced the close of its Series C fundraising, bringing the series total to $262 million. New investors include Aramco Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of Aramco; global investment manager M&G Investments; natural resource investment firm Goehring & Rozencwajg; and investment management firm Baillie Gifford. Existing investor Breakthrough Energy Ventures also joined the round, and several others made additional investments in the Series C, including Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, BHP Ventures and Prelude Ventures.
The metals and mining sectors are under significant pressure to shift to more sustainable production methods while enhancing efficiency and profitability. Boston Metal is developing a scalable technology platform that uses electricity to produce a variety of metals and alloys from a wide range of feedstocks. The company’s Molten Oxide Electrolysis process is simpler, more energy efficient and has a lower environmental impact than traditional methods. With its high-value metals business, Boston Metal is empowering mining companies to create new revenue streams by deploying MOE to extract high-value metals from complex, low-concentration materials that are currently considered waste.
Rondo Energy Secures $60 Million from Global Giants and Leading Climate Investors to Speed Industrial Decarbonization
Rondo Energy, a leading provider of zero-carbon industrial heat and power, has raised $60 million in a new financing planned to speed the rollout of Rondo Heat Batteries (RHBs) worldwide and to transform the global energy storage market. Rio Tinto, Aramco Ventures, SABIC, SCG, TITAN, and SEEIT have joined Rondo’s Strategic Investor Advisory Board (SIAB).
Aramco completes $2.65bn acquisition of Valvoline Inc’s global products business
The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (‘Aramco’) has completed the acquisition of the Valvoline Inc. (NYSE: VVV) global products business (‘Valvoline Global Operations’) for $2.65 billion, through one of its wholly-owned subsidiaries. With this acquisition, which follows the signing of an equity purchase agreement by the companies announced on Aug. 1, 2022, Aramco accelerates its aim to become one of the world’s preeminent integrated, branded lubricants players.
SoftBank-backed Chinese robot maker, JAKA, to build plant in Toyota's backyard
JAKA is one of a number of companies looking to challenge Denmark-based Universal Robots’s lead in collaborative robots, also called co-robots, which play a complementary role to the hulking machines on automated assembly lines. Other contenders include Japan’s Fanuc and Chinese startup Elite Robot. JAKA’s advantage comes from the size of its home market, as well as its track record as a Toyota supplier. The company’s mean time between failure is 80,000 hours, the equivalent of one incident every nine years or so.
JAKA now makes all of its robots in Changzhou, China, at a factory with an annual capacity of about 10,000 units. For JAKA, the Nagoya plant is not only about serving Japanese buyers. In preparation for the expansion, JAKA Robotics raised a total of 1 billion yuan ($148 million) from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Prosperity7 Ventures, a fund under Saudi Aramco.
Aramco and Cognite join forces in new data venture
Aramco and Cognite, a global leader in industrial software, have launched CNTXT, a joint venture based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Headquartered in Riyadh, CNTXT aims to support the Kingdom’s industrial digitalization, and the wider MENA region.
CNTXT will provide digital transformation services enabled by advanced cloud solutions and leading industrial software. These solutions and services aim to help public and private sector companies to future-proof their data infrastructure, increase revenue, cut costs and reduce risks while enhancing operational sustainability and security. CNTXT is Google Cloud’s reseller for cloud solutions in the Kingdom and the exclusive reseller of Cognite Data Fusion in MENA region. Additionally, Google Cloud is expected to launch a “Center of Excellence” later this year to provide training to developers and business leaders in how to use cloud technologies.
Five companies make a quarter of world’s single use plastics
The top 5 companies created roughly 26 million metric tones of plastic waste fueled by demand of the United States and China.
Seeq Announces $50 million Series C Funding Round led by Insight Partners
Seeq Corporation, a leader in manufacturing and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) advanced analytics software, announced today it has closed a $50 million Series C funding round, led by global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners. The round includes participation from existing investors Altira Group, Chevron Technology Ventures, Cisco Investments, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, and Second Avenue Partners. This round brings Seeq’s total funding since inception to approximately $115 million.
Seeq’s rapid growth is being fueled in part by its partnerships and commitment to cloud-based computing. Seeq is available in the AWS Marketplace and is an AWS Industrial Competency Partner. On Azure, Seeq has been available in the Azure Marketplace since 2019 and was recently recognized as a 2020 Microsoft Energy Partner of the Year Finalist. In addition to cloud partnerships, Seeq connects to an extensive set of automation vendor data storage platforms for on premise engagements including OSIsoft, Siemens, GE, Honeywell, Emerson Automation Solutions, Inductive Automation, AVEVA, AspenTech, Yokogawa, and others.